OBJECTIVES: to identify the prevalence of high blood pressure in children and adolescents in studiespublished in the past 30 years. METHODS: a search was carried out in the Medline/PubMed, Lilacs, Web of Science, Embase and Scielo databases for articles published between 1980 and 2009. Articles were included if they were original studies of the prevalence of high arterial blood pressure or hypertension in a sample of more than 500 subjects. RESULTS: the prevalence of high blood pressure (in individuals aged between 4 and 20 years) varied from 0.46% to 20.6%. The lower prevalence of high blood pressure was found in studies where the majority ofthe sample was aged between 4 and 7 years. Theprotocols most commonly used for evaluation of blood pressure were those developed by the Task Force and National High Blood Pressure Education Program. In all, 52.4% of studies used auscultation to determine blood pressure and 47.6% used oscillometry. CONCLUSIONS: despite the great discrepancy between the values for prevalence found in the studies, it is clear that there has been a growth in the prevalence of high blood pressure in children and adolescents all over the world.
Prevalence; High blood pressure; Child; Adolescent
